Men’s 10,000: Galen Rupp Gets His 5th Consecutive US Title After Ritzenhein Shakes Up Race

Dathan Ritzenhein And Chris Derrick Take The Other Two Sports For Moscow As Ben True Is The Odd Man Out

*Did you read our 10,000 preview? If not, catch it here.

by LetsRun.com
June 20, 2013

Des Moines, IA – Coming into the men’s 10,000 at the 2013 USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships it was fairly obvious (on paper at least) that the fight for the three spots on the US team for Moscow was going to come down to four men: Galen Rupp, Chris Derrick, Dathan Ritzenhein, and Ben True. Rupp was almost a 100% lock to win while the battle between Ritzenhein, True and Derrick was almost a complete toss up.

And that is exactly what happened as Rupp won easily cruising away to win in the last lap in 28:47.32 while Ritzenhein took second, Derrick third and True fourth. The only surprise might have been that True wasn’t more in the hunt for third place as he finished a distant 15 seconds behind Derrick and was ten seconds back with 800 to go.

On winning his fifth consecutive US 10k title, Rupp said, “It’s a good feeling, it’s all about winning here. I just keep it rolling as long as I can. It’s fun winning national championships as these are meets we point to all year.”

Dathan Ritzenhein Leads With 550m to Go Men’s 10,000m

The Race:

A 10k is 25 laps around the track, but today’s race was really only six. The early stages of the race were led by Hanson Brooks runner Jake Riley who took the field through a pedestrian 4:51 first mile and 14:56 first 5k in the 82 degree weather. Riley would go on to lead the entire race up through lap 17 at which point teammate Bobby Curtis got the race going with a 63.93 18th lap.

Curtis’ move did little to break up the pack as with seven laps to go the top 12 men were only separated by three seconds. With a mile and a half left Ritz went to the front and started pushing with laps of 64, 63, 63 and then a decisive 61 which broke open the race for the top three. With a mile to go True and Aaron Braun had been dropped and were three seconds behind the leading trio with Matt Tegenkamp right behind them, but then after the 61 second quarter, Rupp was in third with a ten second gap over True in 4th. The race for the three Worlds spots were essentially decided. Now we had to sort out the order of the top three.

Rupp took the lead from Ritzenhein right at the bell with Derrick immediately behind them, but the last lap was no contest as Rupp gapped the two of them easily with a 60.98 last 400, beating Ritzenhein by over two seconds with Derrick another 2+ seconds back.

True was dropped significantly over the last three laps, but was able to hold on to the dreaded fourth place spot by outkicking Braun.

Quick Takes And Interviews:

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Quick Take (QT) #1: Rupp Gets #5:  The Olympic silver medallist was absolutely dominant here as could historically be expected we guess when an Olympic silver medallist races Americans in a 10,000. He cruised in taking the time to look over his shoulder at least three times to check on the guys behind him. While Rupp looked great, he didn’t even have to close very fast for him; really the other guys just slowed down as Ritzenhein and Derrick both ran slower on their last lap than they did the previous two. For comparison, when Rupp won silver at the Olympics he closed in around 54 seconds (he closed in 60.98 here) and that was a much faster race (but obviously not nearly as hot) as his finishing time was 27:30.

QT#2: Ritz Thinking He Can Beat Rupp: An indication of how good Ritz has been running in 2013 is that he came into this race believing he was going to win. After the race he said, “I really believed I was going to win the race…I’ve been training that good. I don’t have the flat out raw speed that Galen does, but I’ve been having the best workouts I’ve had in 4 years”. More on a great interview with Ritz in this thread here.

QT#3: True in 4th: We don’t think this was really a case of True running poorly, but the other guys running well. In hindsight, Ritz really was a good pick for second as he looked great in both his 5k races at Oxy and the Pre Classic and Derrick had ran 5.4 seconds faster over 5k this year than True (13:09.04 to 13:14.44).

After the race, True, who trains in New Hampshire and is the biggest physically of top four, said the heat was a factor saying it “drains your energy a little bit. I tried going and those guys made a nice big jump on me and I just didn’t have it today. They ran a lot faster.”

True has another shot at trying to make the team in the 5000 later this week. He said it was a testament to how bad today was going that he was thinking about that without about 1k to go.

QT#5 Tegenkamp Does the 10k and the Marathon: In a long interview with Matt Tegenkamp, he talks about the decision to come back to the track this year and how it wasn’t that difficult to sharpen up for this as coach Jerry Schumacher‘s training has kept him in touch with 5k/10k speed even while he focuses on longer road races. He’s planning a fall marathon and says the announcement for that will be coming soon.

QT#6: Interview with Derrick below who said after that race that 10th place at Worlds would be “pretty sweet”.

Results: